‘Really Rather Extraordinary’: The Leadership of Matron Beryl Campbell in the Australian Army Nursing Service in World War I Anne Prince Faculty of Design Swinburne University of Technology 144 High Street, Prahran, VIC. 3181 [email protected] Abstract: This chapter explores the previously unrecorded nursing leadership of Beryl Campbell in the Australian Army Nursing Service (AANS) in World War I. It traces her transformation from colonial girlhood in outback Queensland in the 1880s through nursing training and service with Australian hospitals in Heliopolis in Egypt in 1914 to becoming matron of a 1200-bed British hospital in Salonica, Greece, in 1918. The chapter adds to growing scholarship in Australian nursing history in World War I by locating this individual history within the leadership of the AANS. AANS matrons were recognised as a group of powerful women, who had to lead wartime nursing, often in atrocious conditions, while defending AANS independence and upholding an ethic of care for both their patients and their Australian nursing staff. The challenge of incomplete archival records and fragmented personal texts, common issues facing AANS researchers, is addressed through detailed readings of Beryl Campbell’s partial service record, surviving letters, Salonica photographs and two major decorations awarded by the British and French governments. Keywords: Australian Army Nursing Service, World War I, matron, Australian nursing history, Australian nursing leaders Australian nursing historian Ruth Rae once said of her research on the Australian Army Nursing Service in World War I, ‘I love the process of research and I love being able to tell a story, in some detail, about a supposedly ordinary nurse who, of course, was really rather extraordinary – a nurse, a woman, who has been missing from history for far too long’.1 What follows in this chapter is the story of just such a woman. It is the history of a young woman who emerged from colonial Australia to become a leader in the Australian Army Nursing Service (AANS) in World War I. To be a part of that leadership was to be one of a select group of powerful women who had to manage the effort of wartime nursing, often in appalling conditions, while at the same time resisting attempts by the military medical establishment to control them. Here, I explore the transformation of Miss Beryl Campbell, raised on a remote Queensland cattle station in the 1890s, into Matron B.A. © The Author 2012. Seizing the Initiative: Australian Women Leaders in Politics, Workplaces and Communities. Published by the eScholarship Research Centre, The University of Melbourne; all rights reserved. 131 Seizing the Initiative: Australian Women Leaders in Politics, Workplaces and Communities Campbell, leader of a military hospital in Salonica, Greece, in 1917, decorated for her war service by the British and French governments, and a member of this commanding group of Australian women. ‘Militarily impudent’ This exploration is built around three photographic images and two military decorations that illustrate Beryl Campbell’s journey to nursing leadership. The first image shows twenty-two-year-old Miss Beryl Campbell, novice trainee nurse, standing stiffly in the entourage of the enthroned doctor at Rockhampton Hospital, Queensland, in 1910. The second shows Matron Campbell, returned to a final tour of duty in Egypt after a near fatal illness in South Africa in 1917. The third presents Matron B.A. Campbell in confident pose on her camp stretcher in Salonica in 1917. For her ‘valuable services with the British Forces in Salonika’, Beryl Campbell was awarded the Royal Red Cross (1st class), and the Médaille des Epidemies (en Argent).2 The Médaille des Epidemies was given by the French Government especially for nursing services in wartime. Only three Australians were presented with this medal in World War I; all were nurses.3 The Royal Red Cross (RRC) was a creation of Queen Victoria, awarded only to women and bestowed on those who had demonstrated outstanding devotion nursing the sick and wounded of the imperial armed forces.4 A.G. Butler, who wrote the official history of the Australian Army Medical Services in World War I, postwar, lists forty-two RRC awards, while the Australian War Memorial (AWM) notes fifty RRC (1st class) recipients.5 The variation in official numbers is an example of the incomplete or inaccurate records which have frustrated nursing historians of the AANS in World War I and which have made tracing Beryl Campbell’s nursing life difficult.6 The photographs and decorations mentioned offer a way of reading Beryl Campbell’s journey to leadership in the AANS as part of a history of Australian nursing, which had from its inception been the province of a succession of strong women. Lucy Osburn, who led the first contingent of Nightingale-trained nurses to colonial Sydney, clashed with both Florence Nightingale and with medical authorities in a struggle over control of nursing at the Sydney Infirmary.7 AANS matrons in World War I such as Ellen (Nellie) Gould, Margaret Graham, Rose Creal, Adelaide Maud Kellett, Grace Wilson, Jessie McHardie-White and Jane Bell were already senior civilian nurses before serving overseas; they brought with them distinct understanding of the role and responsibilities of nursing leadership. In the AANS in World War I this often meant negotiating a complex path between compliance with orders, defending AANS independence and upholding a strong ethic of care for both patients and Australian nursing staff.8 As an example, in her posting 132 PRINCE • ‘Really Rather Extraordinary’ to Number 1 Australian General Hospital (1AGH) in Egypt, Jane Bell almost immediately clashed with the commanding officer, Colonel W. Ramsay Smith, over nursing management.9 Butler regarded Jane Bell as a woman of ‘commanding ability’ and regretted her subsequent removal from 1AGH as a result of this clash.10 The AANS principal matron on Salonica, Jessie McHardie-White, was similarly forthright in her views, especially that the AANS should have independence from the British nursing arm. She clashed with British medical command when a contingent of AANS bound for Salonica in 1917 was instead dispersed to hospitals in Egypt, and with the Australian Imperial Forces (AIF) headquarters in England when she felt they had abandoned the Salonica nurses with regard to promotion.11 Australian nursing sisters were not particularly amenable to restrictions imposed on them. Nurses were especially hostile to official attempts to segregate them from the Australian soldiers – the Diggers – they had enlisted to serve.12 In October 1916, when Matron Grace Wilson relayed an order forbidding fraternisation to the Australian nursing staff of 3AGH in Brighton, there was outrage, as Sister Anne Donnell reported in a letter home. Matron had an order to give us, and when she had given it we felt as if a thunderclap had burst. She said, ‘I give it to you this once, and only once; I shall never tell it again. Now that you sisters have got the rank of officers and wear stars, you are not to go out with NCOs or Privates, or speak to them, excepting on duty. And if you do so you will be sent away at once into a British hospital.13 When Matron Wilson confirmed that sisters could neither circumvent the order by sneaking out ‘in mufti’ nor bend the rules to fraternise with brothers visiting from the front, there was consternation. The nurses roused themselves to resist. They wrote letters, lobbied politicians and enlisted the indignation of newspapers at home. Anne Donnell later wrote with satisfaction: ‘That’s all over now, and things are going on in the same old way.’14 Ruth Rae speculates that early enfranchisement had given the AANS ‘a level of political autonomy’ not enjoyed by their British nursing counterparts in Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service (QAIMS), a possible factor in shaping resistance to such orders.15 Other factors included the dismissive manner of some QAIMS members towards colonials and the appalling treatment meted out to AANS staff by male medical staff and officers.16 Butler also lauded what he saw as a stubborn streak of Australian egalitarianism in the AANS which he felt mirrored that of the AIF.17 He noted with approval that wherever Australian nurses served they brought with them a particularly Australian value for democratic ideals, with an accompanying disregard for military hierarchy. Australian nurses, wherever they went, were courageous and tactful standard bearers of Australian democracy; and highly illuminating is a social gesture and experiment – militarily impudent perhaps, but ‘put over’ with a success that has 133 Seizing the Initiative: Australian Women Leaders in Politics, Workplaces and Communities made it part of AIF history – carried out by the nurses of No. 3 AGH. The hospital, it will be recalled, was at Abbeville on the Somme … The sisters’ mess, as fitted out by the Red Cross and adorned with original frescoes by two of the ‘orderlies’, was spacious and attractive. Hither, on a general invitation, during the fighting of June to September, assembled on Sunday afternoons irrespective of rank or any other distinction, a complete cross-section of the AIF meeting on equal terms, drawn by the same nostalgic impulse that desired the Australian atmosphere.18 One of Beryl Campbell’s fragmented letters to her sisters reflects Butler’s comments. I cannot tell you how lovely letters are when you are a wanderer on the face of the globe. Your letters are so beautifully Australian, you read of open spaces & great freedom. Much & all as I like England, I could never live here. ‘Convention stands up like a great wall all around & the things we do quite casually in Australia, would make the average British matron ... [remainder missing]19 Determined female leadership and an inclination for egalitarianism were therefore shaping influences in Beryl Campbell’s journey to leadership in the AANS.